Tesla Company has announced that it is now expanding its "Robotaxi" service to Houston and Dallas cities in addition to Austin and San Francisco. However, currently the service will only be tested and operated in designated limited areas, not throughout the entire cities. In Houston, it will operate around a 25 square mile area, and in Dallas, it will run around the Highland Park area.
Robotaxi now rolling out in Dallas & Houston 🤠 pic.twitter.com/G3KFQwqGxB
— Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) April 18, 2026
In this announcement, Tesla has not disclosed detailed information such as how many vehicles will be used, whether there will be a driver in the vehicle, or whether it will operate without a driver. Based on previous experiences from operating in Austin, most vehicles still require a person to sit and monitor for safety and security purposes, and it has been found that the number of vehicles operating is not as large as Elon Musk promised.
Reports say that Tesla's Robotaxi vehicles still have higher accident rates compared to human drivers. Additionally, due to service suspensions during rainy weather, there could be challenges in cities like Houston which experience over 100 rainy days per year. While competing companies typically disclose their accident data transparently, Tesla keeps this information as a trade secret, which has also drawn criticism.
Waymo, Tesla's main competitor, has already begun large-scale driverless service operations in Houston and Dallas cities. Waymo is providing over 500,000 trips per week and has been able to reduce accident rates by up to 91 percent compared to human drivers. Therefore, while Tesla has now started in these new territories, the company is still trying to catch up to Waymo in terms of business conditions.
Ref: electrek
